


what we have is not a sisterhood

by Kierkegarden



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, But fairly movie compliant, Character Study, Child Soldiers, Destruction/creation motif, Family Dynamics, Gen, Not compliant with the pre-Guardians comic, Not terribly shippy but there are undertones, Open/Hopeful Ending, Parallels, Pseudo-Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 20:42:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17495006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kierkegarden/pseuds/Kierkegarden
Summary: “I think your name is beautiful,” he continues, “Nebulae can come from the explosion of a dying star, but they can also mark the place where new stars begin.”“You’re my new star,” Nebula whispers back, and for the first time since he picked her up, she feels the sting of tears in her eyes. He reaches towards her, one giant thumb almost covering her face, as he gently wipes them away.A story of hope built in negative space.





	what we have is not a sisterhood

“What was scattered  
gathers.  
What was gathered  
blows away.”

― Heraclitus

 

  
Nebula’s world is narrowed to a very small screen. The ship isn’t small -- no, it’s the biggest she’s ever seen in all her seven years of life, but her world is miniscule just then. Her view is restricted to the vast front window, out over the control panel. Hoards of operators sit all around her, negotiating controls and adjusting levers, in preparation for take-off. Outside, the snowscapes of Luphom are hazy, obscured by fire and smoke. The lumber mill where her father worked is up in flames.

The huge alien man who put her here walks back up from the hull -- his footfall heavy as a tree crashing to soil, shaking the very floor of the ship. He steps right between Nebula and the window, obscuring her view. Suddenly, her world is even smaller.

She’s only seven years old but Nebula can already tell that this man is going to continue taking up space in her small, restricted world.

“Where are my parents?” she says, even though she knows it’s a risk, “Dead?”

The titan of a man kneels down to look her right in the eye.

“You’re a very brave girl,” he says, “and very smart. What is your name?”

Nebula’s parents told her not to give her name to strangers, although she has met very few strangers up until now. She shakes her head to clear to the thought and answers obediently.

“Nebula.” It sounds strange repeated back to her, and Nebula is tempted to peer around his giant shoulders, to try and make out a final image of her home planet, before it is devoured by flames. The snow is melting, and under it, the ground has turned to mud. Nebula wonders if anyone knows she’s here.

“Do you know what a Nebula is?” he asks and Nebula nods very quickly. _My little stardust,_ she can hear her mother saying, tucking strands of hair behind her ears. She reaches instinctively for it.

“I think your name is beautiful,” he continues, “Nebulae can come from the explosion of a dying star, but they can also mark the place where new stars begin.”

“You’re my new star,” Nebula whispers back, and for the first time since he picked her up, she feels the sting of tears in her eyes. He reaches towards her, one giant thumb almost covering her face, as he gently wipes them away.

“And you, mine,” the man smiles, “My name is Thanos. And once we’ve left and stabilized, you can meet the rest of my galaxy.”

 

Before Nebula can even process what is happening, they have hit a travel lane and are coasting comfortably. The ground feels as stable as if they were back on a planet, and it is very hard for her to believe they are actually moving. Here in the belly of this tremendous ship, the air is hot to her skin and Nebula unwinds her scarf, moving very quickly to keep pace with Thanos. They descend in a windowless elevator, and finally depart into an air-conditioned hallway.

The ship itself is bigger than any building Nebula has ever been in. When it first descended on Luphom, it cast a dark shadow across her whole town.

Thanos leads her past cell-like rooms full of alien people. Nebula sees people with oil-black armored skin, sees people with skin made of animal fur. Mostly, they are other children. They peer at her curiously from the large glass windows. She can hear Thanos saying their names as they pass, but she doesn’t listen. She already hates them.

When they stop, Nebula is relieved that the room is empty.

“Rest,” Thanos says, “tomorrow we begin your training.”

Nebula doesn’t dare ask what for. Instead, she inches inside. The room is dim, but she can make out the shadow of a double-tiered bed. It’s been an entire day of straight travel, strange food, odd tests, and an ever constricting world, and she is exhausted. She flops down gratefully and shuts her eyes.

She is just falling into sleep’s embrace when she hears a low creak from above her. Jolting awake, Nebula bares her teeth. She jumps up, ripping off her thinning blanket.

“Who’s there?”

A pair of eyes shine down at her, holding her gaze.

“Hi,” says a mouth, which Nebula can just barely make out in the dark, below the eyes, “I’m Gamora.”

 

***

 

Nebula loosens her knees. It’s easier now. Her knee caps were one of the first things enhanced, when she wouldn’t keep them as loose and free as Thanos had demanded. They spring easily now from well greased metal sockets. She is faster. A gift, Nebula thinks, that she never wanted.

Gamora’s eyes are dead, staring at her, waiting for a move. In the beginning, Nebula was distracted by those eyes. How long had it taken, Nebula had wondered, for Gamora to learn to focus on nothing but survival; for her to become intrepid?

In the beginning, Nebula would strike first. Both arms now, have been enhanced. Nebula waits, they circle each other like two hungry predators in the ring, like they are the only two survivors on a corpse-laden battlefield.

She wishes that she could console herself, feel satisfied that she’s his second favorite, but it’s impossible. With all the work he’s put into her, all the loving surgery on her muscles, joints, her skin. Thanos has put more time into Nebula than any of the others. It means nothing to her. She’s on pause, his second best fighter, his second best daughter, and it stings far more painfully than if she was his worst.

He blew out her eardrums to implant her with a device that lets her read Gamora’s frequency, listen to her heartbeat. He ripped the hair from her head. There is so little left of her now, Nebula wonders what more he could possibly give her. She reminds herself, presently, as Gamora’s heart thumps a war drum pace, that there will always be something until she is the best.

 

“You’re killing me,” she tells Thanos, when the surgery is complete. On the bed she is panting, exhilarated, the pain still searing behind her eyeball where his latest enhancement has been buried.

“No, little one,” he strokes her bald scalp with one gentle finger, “I’m saving you.”

Nebula pulls herself up, body still reeling. The floor of the ship is hard and cold below her bare feet. She pops the saline tube out of her arm and watches a bead of blood form in its place. Thanos nods in approval.

“You’re a good fighter, Nebula, but not good enough.”

 _Not as good as Gamora._ She feels like crying, feels the heaviness swelling in her head, knocking on the backs of her eyes like a flood that can’t rush out.

“My tear ducts,” she whispers, clenching her fingers into a fist.

“I’m saving you,” says Thanos, “Now, you don’t have to cry anymore.”

 

***

 

“Nebula,” says Gamora, and she shoves a bag of Zarg Nuts into her sister’s hand with the force of a weapon, “Eat.”

Her face is tired, her brow furrowed, but Nebula still can’t make out whether it’s guilt or sheer physical exhaustion that plagues her. She leans up against the post of their bed, runs her metallic thumb across the package. It makes a zipping sound. Gamora shakes her hair free and rolls back her shoulders, climbing up the ladder to her bunk.

Gamora is eighteen and with her clear green skin and soft red hair, she looks like a woman. When Nebula catches her own reflection in the shimmering chrome, she almost sympathizes with Thanos. She mourns for him. He thought he had found another special girl on Luphom ten years ago, but she could never compare to Gamora. Beautiful, deadly Gamora.

“Nebula,” comes a voice from the top bunk, and Nebula vaguely realizes she’s been rubbing her thumb back and forth against the packaging without looking up.

“I don’t want to talk.”

“Fine by me,” Gamora straightens herself across the bunk, “Just eat some food. Regain your strength. He’ll have us spar again tomorrow and you’ll need it.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” says Nebula and tosses the bag back at Gamora, “or what I need.”

“Whatever.”

Nebula knows she should leave it at that, that it’s weak to continue but she’s angry. She can’t quite swallow it. It rushes up, rushes out of her and she feels herself climbing up the ladder to Gamora’s bunk.

“Let’s not wait til tomorrow. I want a rematch. Right here, right now,” she heaves.

“Nebula,” Gamora seethes through her teeth, “This is what he wants.”

“It’s easy for you to say. You can leave it in the ring, you don’t carry it with you in your knees, in your arms, in your spine. You don’t have to wear it.”

Gamora tenses, and reels herself up so she is nose-to-nose with Nebula.

“Yes. I. Do.”

“Not like I do,” says Nebula, “You are his favorite. You’re enough.”

Her voice cracks. She can’t cry, but her voice can still crack and it’s even more embarrassing. Gamora doesn’t move her face, and instead lifts her fingers to cradle Nebula’s chin.

“You’re more than enough,” she whispers, pulling her closer, “You’re _my_ favorite.”

Nebula feels her cheeks go warm in Gamora’s hands. It’s the tiny reassurance she needs to know she’s still organic enough to blush, for blood to circulate through what’s left of her capillaries. She sinks into Gamora’s embrace and lets herself be comfortably smaller. Just for a moment.

“He can take you apart and remake you in his image, but he will never tear us apart,” Gamora whispers into Nebula’s ear. Her heart is sounding quicker than it does during their duels and Nebula, for once, is grateful for her heightened senses.

“And if he breaks me?”

Gamora pulls herself away and looks her sister in the eyes. “I’ll kill him.”

Suddenly, like the rush of water from a river, they laugh together, leaning back against the wall behind Gamora’s bunk. Their feet dangle - Gamora’s dainty and Nebula’s shimmering - off the edge. They laugh and eat zarg nuts and try not to think about how they’ll be forced to fight each other the next morning. What else can they do?

For all of the gifts Thanos has given her, Nebula thinks, the greatest one was accidental.

 

****

 

This is, Thanos says, a very important mission. The most important yet -- which is why he sends his best and second best warrior to aid in it. Nebula watches the edges of her world pushed to unprecedented levels of closeness. Although her new eye can turn on panoramic mode, has dark vision, and can sense heat signatures -- she sees very little of what’s right in front of her.

She’s got to keep it that way or else she might start seeing the faces of other little girls, whose planets have been desecrated, whose parents have been slaughtered. She doesn’t turn away out of shame, but out of survival. This, Nebula thinks, is why Gamora never let her win.

They use gallows humor like a rope, swinging dangerously over the precipice.

“I’ll kill him,” Nebula says one day, crunching down her breakfast, “When I’m done killing for him.”

“Mhm,” says Gamora, “Looking forward to it.”

They listen to Ronan’s tactical assignments in weary silence and obey, as they’ve been trained. But in secret, they keep each other alive with threats of violence to come; violence to end violence. What monsters he has made out of them, Nebula thinks, out of two sad, scared little girls.

When Gamora leaves to steal the orb, she doesn’t come back. For the first time ever, Nebula realizes, she is Thanos’s best standing soldier. She is the brightest star. She is exquisitely and tremendously alone.

 

***

  
  
He’ll never tear us apart.

It is this phrase, this single promise that Nebula falls back on again and again. In the early hours of the day, she runs the dialogue back and forth in her mind. She feels the lie, cold and bitter.

Gamora’s escape from the Kyln is chatter on the lips of every member of Ronan’s crew. In the beginning, they still expect her return. As the days go on, long and cold, in this vacuum of time and space, Nebula knows better.

It’s everything they ever wanted, everything they promised to each other. She lies awake, tracing projections of their wanted posters in the command center. Nebula wants to tell herself that it’s the Terran holding her sister hostage aboard his ship. She wants to believe that Gamora is out there, somewhere, thinking about her -- that Nebula is still her favorite.

She knows Gamora, knows the violence that’s lurking just below her skin. Knows her strength and knows her spirit. She knows that Gamora could never be held hostage again.

It’s easy, she thinks, to be someone’s favorite when you’re forced into close quarters, united by a common enemy. I never was worth anything to her, she thinks, all this time.

This time, Nebula isn’t prepared for the disappointment. She studies the soft, symmetrical face of the Terran. Runs fingertips across the bark of the tree creature, the snarling face of the tiny, bipedal mammal. She caresses the scarification on the biceps of the lumbering grey fighter and she wonders, “what do they have that I don’t have?”

Nebula rubs and rubs at the corners of her eyes, desperately trying to scratch tears out. When it doesn’t work, she screams at the top of her lungs, towards the void of space rushing past the window. She should have known that Gamora would be better at escaping, too.

 

  
Thanos calls Nebula before him and her first thought is “what else can he take?” She realizes upon seeing his face, projected before her on Ronan’s ship, that he has lost composure. Perhaps he doesn’t want anything from her, perhaps -- Nebula thinks, Nebula _hopes_ desperately -- he wants to give her something.

“I miss her,” Thanos says, “Do you miss her?”

Nebula feels gutted, her stomach clenching, heart whirring as the mechanism spins towards its maximum. (An overexcited heart is no good in combat, Thanos had told her, there is virtue in staying level headed.)

“No,” she lies, “Gamora betrayed us. I feel nothing for her.”

Thanos’s lip twitches, although his eyes are still broken. His smile is for me, Nebula thinks, but his heart breaks for Gamora. (Eyes say more than words, Thanos had told her, before tattooing her irises as dark as the night sky. You can always see the fear in an enemy’s eyes.)

“Don’t lie to me, little one,” Thanos says.

Nebula sighs.

“I miss her,” she admits, “She was the only one who I loved like a sister.”

Thanos laughs coldly. “Like a sister?”

Nebula bites her lip.

“Without her, you are my favorite by proxy. I have put so much time into you, Nebula, so many resources. Will you resent her if she returns to take your place?”

“Gamora’s not coming back,” Nebula snaps, “She hates you!”

“No,” Thanos says, almost disinterested, “I never taught Gamora to hate. But _you._ Do you hate me, Nebula?”

Nebula sniffles, her head flooding. She doesn’t nod or shake her head, just stares straight at his projection. Thanos smiles, leaning back over crossed arms.

“I’m giving you a chance,” he says, “Go find Gamora. Bring her back to me.”

“You’ll hurt her,” Nebula whispers, just to hear what she already knows to be true.

Thanos extends a hand to her, and it’s still so big compared to Nebula’s own. Even though it’s just a projection, Nebula can feel it tighten a fist around her universe, squeezing her for anything she may have left.

“You know better, little one,” he says softly, “You know I’d never hurt Gamora.”

 

***

  
  
Nebula’s hatred builds to a climax. She’s fighting Gamora to kill her, and has normalized it in her mind. She’ll kill Gamora, she’ll try and kill Thanos, Thanos will kill her, and then this whole fucked up saga will be put to rest.

She was trained to believe that both of them wouldn’t just die, that they’d be killed. Nebula can remember lying awake with Gamora on her bunk on the Sanctuary II, placing bets on who would do the deed.

They were ten.

“I bet you’re going to be killed single-handedly battling a whole hoard of Shi’ar warriors,” Nebula had said, dreamily, “You’re gonna take on ten of them, and you’re gonna be outnumbered. They’ll encircle you, and you’ll drop your weapon and then -- boom -- you’re gonna be toast.”

Gamora had looked down at her, half-offended and sleepy. “I bet father is gonna do you in. One of these days he’s going to go too far.”

They were ten, Nebula thinks bitterly. She’s going to kill them both, she thinks, because this anger doesn’t have anywhere else to go.

 

A few times, they come so close to killing each other. On Knowhere, Nebula leaves Gamora in a pod bound for implosion, to the mercy of space. At Xandar, Nebula drops herself to its mercy, like an offering. They both find themselves, against all odds, saved. They can dance around the edge, Nebula thinks, but they can’t finalize it.

Finally, Nebula’s world is vast again. It looks like the emptiness that refuses to swallow her, refuses to end Gamora for her. They are both alive, and Thanos is alive, and Nebula realizes that there is a greater goal than ending her sister.

She has, for once, opportunity in the physical sense. But as sure as Gamora’s heartbeat ringing loudly in her ears, she is chained by the mantra.

A life for a life, she tells herself, she must kill Thanos.

 

***

 

To Nebula, freedom looks a lot like chains. She sees Gamora sitting with her new family, laughing, and she doesn’t even feel the sting of envy anymore. Instead, she is just happy that she can be happy. That one of them could finally be happy.

It’s a pyrrhic victory but Gamora’s glowing with it, and when she comes to visit Nebula in her designated quarters on the Terran’s ship, Nebula can’t help but smile genuinely.

“Thanks,” Gamora says, “For at least letting us give you a lift.”

“I’m glad I get to see you again,” Nebula says and she means it.

Gamora shuts her eyes and sits beside Nebula on her cot.

“What we have is not a sisterhood,” she says, more seriously.

“A common enemy?”  
  
“It’s more than that,” Gamora explains, “Now that I realize what a family is. It’s more than family too.”

Nebula feels her heart whirring, trying to race. She feels her cheeks warming. “What are we, then?”

Gamora runs a gentle finger across Nebula’s bare scalp, tracing the lines in the machinery. “The only two people in the universe,” she says, “who truly understand each other.”

“Mm,” Nebula leans into her, thinking about how much she likes that.  
  
“I can’t let you go after Thanos,” Gamora murmurs against her ear, “Just to get yourself killed.”

Nebula straightens, inching back from her, eyes glazing with betrayal. “It’s not your choice to make.”

“I know,” says Gamora, “so all I can say is please. And I love you.”

Nebula looks at her sideways and hopes that whatever the Guardians have done to her sister isn’t contagious.

 

I love you too, she thinks.

 

***

 

So she tries to kill Thanos, and she prepares, and for months of it, Nebula thinks she’ll succeed. While they’re off doing little things to gently save the world, she thinks, she’s going to pull the plug behind their backs and save it entirely.

Killing Thanos is her birthright, it’s her last will and testament. She’d gladly give her own life to take his. It becomes less of a mission and more of a need and she feels it grow as the months go on, so she makes herself ready.

So Nebula knows it’s a suicide mission, and if she doesn’t come out alive, she won’t count it as a failure. As long as he’s dead too, it will be all be over. And Gamora can finally rest, with her world blown wide open. One of them can finally experience freedom, and it will be enough.

 

It is dark when Nebula sneaks into his ship. She crawls silently into the airlock, the metal of her knees scraping against rusty grates. She pulls herself down along the rows of dormitories, crouches in the shadows, making her footsteps feather light.

She knows where each of his children sleep, knows every single habit of every single occupant of this ship. She could navigate the Sanctuary II without her night vision and hearing enhancements. She could do it in her sleep.

Nebula creeps towards the throne room where she can see the outline of Thanos’s head suspended above it’s arms, hear his steady breathing. He’s asleep, Nebula thinks, and she takes a quick breath in, the air hot in her lungs.

She stops to disable the alarms with codes she still remembers and then springs like a predator back her feet. Stretches, readies her electric batons. Leans down over him to finish the deed in one practiced blow.

Before she can make the final move, Thanos grabs her wrist. She shrieks at the sudden movement, feels her heart stalling and whirring as her body shudders backwards. She crashes down at his feet.

“Hello, Nebula,” says Thanos, in an almost bored tone, “I’ve stayed up all night waiting for your return.”

 

***

 

One of them dies and it is not her.

After her escape, after all she has risked, Nebula thought that they would take him together. Her sister’s absence is louder than her heartbeat.

It takes Nebula a moment to realize it. Her first thought is that he’s probably left Gamora on the ship, a problem to return to when half the world is gone and his mission is complete. By then, he won’t be angry. By then, he will have no reason to hurt her.

It is the cold husk of a planet that is Titan that whispers to her, calls out to her. Nebula thinks, this planet is their third sister -- wrung out to its core. Dead. She knows a split second before Mantis, can see clearly in Thanos’s face that he is mourning. And that’s when Gamora materializes in the negative space.

Nebula’s world seizes completely shut. A beat passes in total darkness, serenity, as she offers herself to space and time, and then her eyes flash open and Thanos is _there_ and he’s the only one she sees.

Her second thought feels like how she remembers hot tears feeling rolling down organic flesh.

I won, Nebula thinks, I outlived her. In the corner of her vision, she is vaguely aware of people moving towards Thanos, stealing her birthright. She no longer feels anger. She simply feels wrung dry.

 

***

 

There was never a plan for if Thanos won.

There was never a plan, because it would be a logistical nightmare. Because, Nebula shudders, the lottery of his children’s lives never allowed for it. Roles in a plan cannot be assigned to dead people. There was no immunity to chance, not even for his favorite.

He actually did it and Nebula lived to watch it happen. She looks down at herself, limbs all crooked, taken apart and reassembled too many times. Her enhanced eyes refocus on a panorama of the destruction, taking it in again and again, the crumbling of mortal life to ash.

He built her with all of his fury and all of his madness and never bothered to unbuild her. Nebula wonders, for a split second, if it was his enhancements that saved her life. If, to the magic of the Gauntlet, she even counted as alive.

So long ago, a young girl had watched a snow-covered planet burn to the ground. She had watched the destruction of one family remake the construct of family through a tilted lens. She had made sisterhood in the belly of despair. She had forged love with the ashes of hate. She had traded her eyes for better sight and her ears for better hearing. She had traded a child for a weapon.

Thanos had done everything he could to break the foundation that made them -- Nebula and Gamora, two halves of a perfect whole. The only ones in the universe who understood each other -- whatever they were.

Nebula sits down. Blinks. Flexes the joints on her mechanical hand back and forth. Beneath the snow, beneath the mud, she remembers, Luphom was built on a solid foundation.

Nebula thinks, everything I’ve built, I’ve built in negative space.

Nebula thinks, every story I’ve told, I’ve told in reverse.

She stands then, as a survivor, and feels something pounding behind her eyes, a bright and brilliant light. It’s something like Gamora, she thinks. It’s something like hope.


End file.
